Design Meeting Notes, 9/27/2023

[DanielRosenwasser]

Relate Control Flow to Conditional Types in Return Types

#33912
(continued from #55754)

function createLabel<T extends string | number>(
    idOrName: T,
): T extends string ? { name: string } : { id: number } {
    if (typeof idOrName === "number") {
        return { id: idOrName };
    }
    return { name: idOrName };
}

• Can't easily implement these functions because we'll error on the return statements.

  • Need a type assertion.

• Conditional types are not exactly accurate in what they can model. Your runtime type might not align with your design-time type.

  function foo<T>(x: T): T extends number ? number : string; {
    if (typeof x === "number") return x;
    return "";
  }
  
  let x: unknown = 42;
  foo(x); // has type string?
  • unknown doesn't extend number, but it could actually be one!

• Roughly, conditional types aren't safe when the false-most branch doesn't contain (isn't a supertype of) the types in true branches.

  • ...or the conditional type doesn't check directly against the constrained types in some way.
    • Saved by conditional type distribution (otherwise also has issues!)
  • Constructivist logic sure is annoying!
    • It is easy to get this wrong.

• This is a problem because you need this to accurately describe what an if statement does.

• Could say the result is effectively a union when the types are comparable? Or intersection is non-vacuous?

• Another concept - some way to express negation of literals and primitives.

  • Cannot carve out the object hierarchy.

• These two ideas feel a bit tied - usually you can't say anything conclusively about intersections of object types being vacuous. You can always create new types by intersecting. But you can make statements regarding primitives.

• It's probably too late to change conditional types. But there's forms of conditional types that are safe. And you could perform the narrowing when you encounter those.

• Is it worth pushing on this space?

  • Well, the extends in a conditional type doesn't directly correspond to what a function will actually do. So that's not safe either. You'd need some way to relay what expressions do in type space.
  • Also, people needing to write this stuff explicitly - it becomes a burden as well.

• Does type argument inference throw a wrench in here?

  • Doesn't feel like it, but possibly.

• Feel is "too complex" but we're possibly not coming at this with a solution-oriented approach.

  • Intentionally picked a bad example.
  • But there's a lot of road bumps towards a good solution. Needs negated types, and special form of conditional types, and more accurate predicate in conditional types, and...

• Want to come back to this convo while showing off what's actually enabled by the current prototype.

Emitting an Ambiguity Error When Declaration Emit Will Differ

#55860

export const blah = Math.random() < 0.5 ? "foo" : "bar";

• Variable is a literal union in the project, widened to string in declaration emit.
• Destructuring, &&, ||, and ?? have some different paths.
• Erroring seems like a reasonable short-term solution - but would like to reconsider another time in a way that doesn't error.